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Transformers: The Last Knight

Hello readers. I don’t usually do movie reviews, but for whatever reason I feel compelled to write about the recently released summer blockbuster “Transformers: The Last Knight.” If anything, this is more of a warning than a review because I feel oddly numb and regret actually sitting through this tedious piece of crap movie that is basically over two hours of watching stuff crash and explode. I know that stuff crashing and exploding should be cool, right? It was kind of interesting for the first half of the movie, but trust me, once you realize that you’ve been watching this overfunded abomination of action cinema for an hour, the sinking feeling that you’re now just wasting your life will set in.

The movie starts out in the dark ages, which sets up the feeble plot and makes us aware that the transformers have been around for a long time. Like this is supposed to add some meaning to the story and make it worth the prolonged torture that the viewer will have to go through. Fast forward to the present, and there’s Mark Walberg, and interestingly enough, Anthony Hopkins, who played Hannibal Lecter is calling himself Sir Edmund Burton, but unfortunately he doesn’t eat anyone because that would make this movie actually interesting. I’m not sure why Anthony Hopkins agreed to be in this film, overall he’s the only one in the whole movie that’s a convincing actor. I think he’s also the only person in the film to say more than a sentence at any given time. So, bravo for bringing in one person to carry the acting weight for everyone else.

This movie isn’t about the acting though, it’s about endless scenes of stuff crashing and blowing up. Over and over and over again, just things crashing and blowing up. It happens so much that by the final scenes when even bigger things are crashing and blowing up, there is no way to care or even know what’s going on. I think this movie is over two hours long, but you’ll swear it’s three, four, or maybe five hours towards the end. Honestly, it feels like your soul is being sucked from your body as you try to pay attention to why exactly all of these things are crashing and blowing up. Whatever was going on in the opening scenes of the movie doesn’t matter at all towards the end other than there’s a robot dragon which reminds the viewer that this has something to do with medieval times.

To amuse myself during the movie, I thought about things like why the soldiers are using M4 rifles against robots. The .223 cartridge is fine against human sized targets, but I don’t think it’d do much against a 20 foot tall robot. Also, the transformers have gattling guns which I’m assuming use belt fed ammo. Where are the transformers getting this ammo? For one, if you’re a civilian, good luck getting belt fed ammo. These aren’t just civlians though, these are giant robots. Is there a special black market that caters to giant robots or something? For two, these are transformers, what are the odds that their guns use standard NATO rounds? Ammo isn’t cheap and gattling guns such as the minigun have around a 5000 round per minute firing rate. The final scene drags on for what seems like forever, but it’s somewhere around 20 minutes. That’s 100,000 rounds. Let’s say they’re firing .50 caliber rounds, you could buy a really nice house for what that would cost. I’m not sure if they’d give a bulk discount to transformers, but $500,000 to $700,000 for one gun. If the transformers are using a custom caliber, the amount of ammo they shoot off in the last scene would be in the millions.

I’ll digress on the gun talk. It’s a movie and we’re supposed to use suspension of disbelief at times. I can’t believe how this obviously multi-million dollar film sucks so much. It’s a sensory overload of robots and gadgets coming from every angle. And yes, they crash and blow up very often as I mentioned. When Anthony Hopkins’ character dies, I can’t even say I cared or knew why he was killed. I don’t even feel bad about giving away this spoiler because I doubt you’ll even care by the time you make it that far into the movie.

Overall, Michael Bay puts on a spectical of endless explosions, robots, and characters that are almost impossible to care about. It’s as if he’s saying every few minutes, “did you like that crash and explosion? Just wait, I’ll show you another one! No, don’t turn away, I’ve got so many things blowing up! Oh my God! Isn’t this so cool?” I like explosions and this movie ruined them for me for awhile. I feel like I need to watch something like “Lost in Translation,” which is weird and dry just to decompress from this awful shit show of an action movie.